Warrior Poets Society

Who And What Is Our Society?

By Dennis Fritzinger

The name “Warrior Poets Society” was supposed to convey Dave Foreman’s idea that Earth First! was a warrior society and we are Earth First!ers and also poets. What this meant at the time, and not just to me, was that we were biocentrist poets, with an Earth First! edge (energy) and coyote humor.

We weren’t to be taken completely seriously because humor was part of our magic and the ability to laugh at ourselves and each other was sorely necessary.

We didn’t want to become rigid like marxists, stalinists, conservative republicans or other fundamentalists. We hoped to remain playful and high-spirited, not endlessly concerned with points of theory (even while we were not against expending intellectual energy to follow theoretical arguments). Our praxis would set the finer points of our philosophy.

All of this is still true, and applies to us today. In addition, we recognize that we are not alone in our concerns–many other poets, past and present, have had them too. I try to identify who they might be by reading widely as well as deeply. Though not a recognized strain in poetry (at least yet), it’s definitely there–you only have to know what the threads look like in order to pick them up.

In poetry’s immense waterfall (that I hope never goes dry) there are comets and streamers we call ‘warrior poetry’. The fall would be far less rich without them.

There’s two kinds of EF! poets: Contributors and Performers. Performers are the rarer kind, and could rightly be called Performance Poets. They are (or were) Slugthang (Andrew Rodman), Matthew Haun, and Gnome.

Then there’s the Contributors, poets who regularly send in poems to the Journal (or Warrior Poets Society).

There’s also the one-time contributors, who give a little to the Journal but then stop–either they step aside for other voices, decide they don’t share our vision, or simply don’t write more.

Maybe their vision of what a poet is doesn’t include activist. Or maybe they see the Journal as reaching too small an audience for their brand of activism.

There is no surer road to activist ‘burnout’ than mouthing propaganda in phrases false to one’s conscience. In literary terms, this means never writing or speaking below one’s own standard of taste and culture. John Gardner, the novelist and teacher of writing, cut through the problem of imagining one’s audience by saying simply:

“One writes for people like oneself”–even if one doesn’t know any such people. Indeed, this is the only course that avoids the dishonesty of writing or talking “down” to others.”

Deep Ecology, the philosophy that empowers Earth First!ers to sit in trees and block bulldozers, draws on science (ecology) and philosophy (questioning) to create an ethos of action, whether direct (above ground) or covert (monkeywrenching).

Like Gandhi, Thoreau and Buddhism it incorporates nonviolence or do-least-harm into its outlook. (Nonviolence is not, strictly speaking, the same as passive or unviolent. And do-least-harm could be a description of Earth First!-style (rather than, say, Alf-style) monkeywrenching.)

As one who believes speech was the first human technology, I recognize the power of words for good or for ill. To some extent, those who wield words well have power equal to those who attained it by traditional methods like clubbing their way up the ladder.

Thus poets are a force to be reckoned with.

Date: July 4, 2011

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Today the Norwegians in their thousands gathered to sing Pete Seeger's song in the centre of Oslo, this was moving as a foil for the court case going on in the background, of the Massacre imbecile of 22nd July at Utoya. The assasin's idea was to cleanse Norway of things and people different from the Norwegians, to drive out the peoples of other creeds and save Norway from their influence.

There they stood with their thousands of roses, gathered in Youngstorget marketplace, it was moving, and yet we should gather as all nations, united nations, and sing of our sorrow at destroying nature.

The United Nations should have a day and sing of our world.
and our massacre of nature;.
stop using our cars unnecessarily,
stop throwing rubbish into nature – making atomic rubbish-rubbish in space-
stop using oil and gas.
stop producing so many clothes-we have enough to cover us!
stop producing only for profit unhealthy things.

stop so many things that the list is possibly unending.

"Barn av regnbuen" Lillebjorn Nilsen's translation of Pete Seeger's song: "My Rainbow Race".
Lillebjorn Nilsen led the crowd of many thousands of Norwegians, children and adults, the police wondered whether anything would take place, but all went with calm peacefully, as the people went slowly to the court, where the trial is taking place, and lay their roses outside it.

The idea of Norway is just as silly as the idea of any other area of this globe, if you read Hans Borli's poem:-

We Own the Forests.

I have never owned a tree.
None of my people.
have ever owned a tree –
though my family's life-path winds.
over centuries' blue heights.
of forest.

Forest in storm,
forest in calm –
forest, forest, forest,
through all the years.

My people
were always a poor people.
Always.
Children of life's.
hard, iron-frosted nights.

Strangers own the trees,
and the soil,

the stone-heaped soil.
my fathers cleared.
by the light of the moon's lamp.

Strangers
with smooth faces.
and pretty hands.
and their car always waiting.
outside the door.

None of my people.
have ever owned a tree.
And yet we own the forests.
by our blood's red right.

Rich man,
you with the car and the bank book.
and stock in Borregaard timber company;.
you can buy a thousand acres of forest,
and a thousand acres more,
but you can't buy the sunset.
or the whisper of the wind.
or the joy of walking homeward.
when the heather blooms along the path –
No, we own the forests,
the way a child owns its mother.

We cannot own nature or even areas of nature and all we do when we do is exploit her and the people who live there already.

"BLIND VISIONS"

Blind visions guide the imbecile,
his notes a garbled rhyme,
like many stones that argue, on the bed.
of the great sea.
of books, ideas and symbols,
from when man on earth was free.

to now
when all is jumbled in a great big muddled sack,
from which the youth of ages.
has tried to win his freedom back,
this madman follows patterns.
of thought from long ago,
when man was much more primitive,
and really didn't know.

of all the fine philosophies.
that present poeple understand,
on the world wide web of wonder.
that reaches out to all,
to watch and learn the values.
man has gleaned of human grace.
and worth, a right we have to live a life.
to death from birth,
on this our planet Earth.

Pat Berna states- "This was my grandfather's favorite poem that, as a boy, he would stand on a stump in the woods and recite to the dying fall leaves and flowers. He loved poetry ad shared it with us- his family. .I like to share it this time of year as the country side and woods go to rest rest in the softest shades of brown tinged with a touch of pink, as the bluest skies look down on us till springs and green growing things and lively life returns .

The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere.
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread;
The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay,
And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood
In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?
Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers
Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours.
The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain
Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.

The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago,
And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow;
But on the hills the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,
And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty stood,
Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men,
And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and glen.

And now, when comes the calm mild day, as still such days will come,
To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home;
When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still,
And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill,
The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore,
And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more.

And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died,
The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side.
In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forests cast the leaf,
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief:
Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young friend of ours,
So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers.
William Cullen Bryant
Poems by William Cullen Bryant : 87 / 142

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